Objective:

The purpose is to explain why and how four U.S. cities and their planners are supporting certain types of urban manufacturing in inner-city neighborhoods impacted by brownfields. Specifically, the changing relationships will be examined between local planning stakeholders that result in alternative economic development strategies encouraging new industrial development in neighborhoods distressed by industrial decline.

Approach:

This study will be a mixed-methods research project designed with a comparative case study approach. Specific objectives include: (1) providing a critical literature review to identify local economic development and brownfield redevelopment issues affecting urban manufacturing; (2) framing urban manufacturing issues in the national manufacturing policy debate; (3) creating a typology of sustainable manufacturing suitable for inner-city neighborhoods and identifying characteristics of productive industrial areas required to support desirable types of urban manufacturing; (4) completing a comparative study between neighborhood contexts, social (policy) networks, and economic development planning strategies emphasizing manufacturing in brownfields-impacted neighborhoods in Atlanta, GA; Milwaukee, WI; Philadelphia, PA; and San Francisco, CA; (5) synthesizing common themes and divergent issues from the case studies; and (6) recommending policy and research directions for advancing urban manufacturing in smart growth, brownfield redevelopment, environmental justice, sustainable local economic development and national manufacturing strategies.

Expected Results:

This study suggests that growing optimism in the U.S. manufacturing’s
recovery, coupled with evolving structures and functions of social (policy)
networks involving diverse groups of local stakeholders concerned
with brownfields, economic development, smart growth, environmental
justice and manufacturing are influencing inner-city neighborhood revitalization
decisions.

Potential to Further Environmental/Human
Health Protection

This project builds on prior research documenting that smart growth
policies tend to overlook manufacturing’s contribution to sustainable
local economic development, and reinforce non-industrial reuse of
brownfields and converting remaining industrial areas to uses other than
manufacturing. The presence of brownfields and their impacts in innercity
neighborhoods remain a widespread phenomenon, and a number of
cities are reconsidering their smart growth and brownfield redevelopment
strategies. These cities are seeking to revitalize neighborhoods while
simultaneously encouraging manufacturing and strengthening remaining
productive industrial areas in these neighborhoods. This research will
examine these issues and answer related policy questions: What is happening
and why? Who is involved in changing brownfield redevelopment
and neighborhood revitalization strategies? What is working, and what
is not? Are there lessons and concepts for advancing sustainable local
economic development planning? How can answers to these questions
inform the national manufacturing policy debate?

Supplemental Keywords:

brownfields, urban manufacturing, sustainable development

Progress and Final Reports:

The perspectives, information and conclusions conveyed in research project abstracts, progress reports, final reports, journal abstracts and journal publications convey the viewpoints of the principal investigator and may not represent the views and policies of ORD and EPA. Conclusions drawn by the principal investigators have not been reviewed by the Agency.